Sonoma Wine Pioneer John Pedroncelli Dies at 89

John Pedroncelli started making wine for his family’s Sonoma winery in Dry Creek Valley when Harry Truman was President. For 66 vintages, he made the sort of wines he liked: easy-to-sip reds and whites that people could afford to drink every day. On Jan. 4, just a few months shy of his 90th birthday, Pedroncelli died after a brief struggle with cancer.

He was among the last of a generation of winemakers who came of age just after Prohibition. Humble in his approach, Pedroncelli set the winemaking style for Pedroncelli Winery. “We like people to drink our wines, not put them away,” he told Wine Spectator in a 2012 profile of the Pedroncelli family.

Born in Dunsmuir, Calif., Pedroncelli was 2 years old when his father, Giovanni, purchased a vineyard and defunct winery and moved the family to Geyserville in Sonoma. It was 1927 and the height of Prohibition. Giovanni–an Italian immigrant–borrowed $11,000 to buy the property along Canyon Road.

In the early years, the family made field-blend wines in bulk, selling them in barrels to Northern California stores and in jugs to local Italian farmers who stopped by the winery for a refill. In 2012, Pedroncelli recalled an arduous delivery he made with his dad when he was 7 or 8 years old. Hauling a load of grapes with a Ford Model A, they set out for Dunsmuir, about 250 miles away. “We were near Red Bluff and I heard a noise ... then I see the car’s back wheels passing us by,” John said with a laugh. “We had broken an axle.”

Pedroncelli served in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II and later graduated from Santa Rosa Junior College, where he studied chemistry and botany. He later studied enology at the University of California at Davis.

In 1949, he made the first bottled Zinfandel under the Pedroncelli label. John and his brother Jim bought out their father's share in the winery in 1963. Soon, Pedroncelli was guiding the winery’s transition from bulk-wine producer to premium winery. By the 1980s the family owned 180 acres of vines in three sites in Dry Creek Valley. Although his health was failing, Pedroncelli remained actively involved in the 2014 harvest.

Pedroncelli was an avid world traveler, and a dedicated outdoorsman who enjoyed foraging for wild mushrooms as well as hunting and fishing. He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Christine, his three children, five grandchildren, his brother and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.

Jim Pedroncelli (left), John (right) and their father Giovanni raise a glass in 1963, the year the sons took charge of the winery.